I’ve done the 29er rigid fork on 26″ bike thing as well. Like Northwind, it worked out pretty well with the handling.

I think Brant has some bolt-through rigid forks coming out as well. I don’t remember the axle standard or which brand they come under, but I’m sure you can find them if you look hard enough.

My girlfriend and I parked up overnight in some random carpark on The Chase last week. We were on our way up to The Highlands and just taking a break…

There was a quite extraordinary number of doggers around.

So, I wouldn’t recommend that!

LOL, let me correct that my Karate Monkey was one of the worst mountain bikes I‘ve ever ridden.

Glad you like yours :)

singlespeedstu – Smiley noted but I think in that case, head angle was the major factor. I could be wrong, but the point remains that two bikes with identical suspension travel and wheel size handle in utterly different ways.

I’m not going to conclude that 26″ bikes are inappropriate for XC just because my jumpy bike is inappropriate for XC.

I think it’s only fair to remember that there’s more to bikes than wheel size.

A 29er Surly Karate Monkey is one of the worst mountain bikes I’ve ever ridden.

A 29er Singular Swift is one of the best mountain bikes I’ve ever ridden.

My slack-angled 26″ wheeled mucking about bike handles much slower than my steep angled 26″ XC bike did.

If you insist…

thisisnotaspoon has obviously never ridden anywhere cold. At one point in Alaska it was nearly up to 0C and quite still, so I took my jacket off. It wasn’t long before the wind chill created by my movement cut through me and I was straight back onto the jacket. A mere glance at windchill charts will tell you that windproof is where it’s at. You don’t need much more than that over your core when you’re moving, but you do need an outer shell.

To answer trailrat’s question, I wore (and intend to wear next year) trainers with thin socks, wools socks and Neos Navigator boots. Below -20C, I’d throw in some chemical warmers as well. I rode on Shimano DX flats with no straps.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not going to name the shop as they're known to have thrown a hissy fit in the past for someone complaining about them on a forum. Their reputation precedes them, so most STWers would probably avoid them anyway. But they were the only option for that bike at that time.

While I understand that the legal rights are under the sale of goods act, and I've read previous threads saying (as TJ re-iterated) that it's up to me to prove that it's a defect, I guess that the company's admission that it is a manufacturing defect will suffice. I suppose that's where it turns from the warranty (which they're free to weasel around with) to the sale of goods.

Reading http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk, it seems like it is worth writing to my credit card company as well. Time to do some letter-writing before going down the small-claims route.

From now on, it's niche bikes direct (2 of the bikes in my shed) or from Cycle Care (2 more in the shed)!

It was sold with 140mm Fox Forks, I replaced them with 100-130mm Revelations. I don't know the axle-to-crown, but I can't imagine that the Revs would be longer.

I have emailed the manufacturer, so maybe they will help.

It really aggravates me when I compare to recent LBS cases… My friend took an Easton stem to Cycle Care in Wycombe to return it due to a product recall. Easton never got around to sending him a new one so the shop gave him one from their own stock. He hadn't even bought it from Cycle Care and they knew that… but you can bet he'll be back to buy stuff from them in the future.

Douglas Mawson. He's not a mountain biker, but he knows a fair bit about not giving up.

Since I got caught out with having hands too numb to pull my worn brake pads out of the caliper, I've always carried a Leatherman.

Since then, I've frequently used the pliers to do brake pads and remove thorns etc from tyres. I've used the scissors for cutting toothpaste tube for tyre boots and (on long trips) my nails. I've used the saw to cut grooves into makeshift poles for setting up a tarp. I've use the file to de-bur other peoples geared chainrings. I've opened a beer or two with it :)

It's pretty heavy, but I carry it any time I have my Camelbak or I'm going multi-day.

These are great:

http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/frameset/detail/627230_Panda_Licorice_Torpedos_100g.html

Tasty, less than 1% fat, and (unlike Haribo et al.) vegetarian.

Weirdly, though, my local Tesco hides them at the Pharmacy counter.

On the face-plate. Where it's machine around the part for the bolt. Hope replaced it, which is good, but not so useful if you're in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, I noticed it in Bracknell Forest which is not the middle of nowhere :)

You've put more patience/planning into your bikes than I do… It'll be great to have it all together!

Sounds like you're going to have a nice bike there… I'd give the Hope stem a miss. Mine cracked after bikepacking Wales and a couple of days before I flew out for the TD.

Luckily, I had another one to swap in there. I don't have an awful lot of faith in them for lugging big loads, though.

The first one I rode for what could be recognised at mountain biking was a "Concept Arrow".

Basically rubbish, and lasted less than 10 rides before I was hooked on the sport and frustrated by the failures (bent wheels, bent seatpost, wobbly BB, seized forks, rubbish brakes, seized gear shifters). So I went and bought a Specialized Rockhopper which was fantastic.

Oddly enough, I just wrote a blog post about my first MTB ride on that original piece of junk.

I had one of those the other week…

On a singletrack section that crosses a fire road, I was looking uphill along the fire road to make sure it was clear and braking a bit in case I had to stop. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with both knees having been hit so hard that I couldn't stand. It took me 10 minutes to be able to walk, about 20 to pedal, and a couple of weeks to be able to ride without pain.

It turns out that there was a trail-coloured tree stump hiding in the singletrack before the fire road. Doh!

If you're staying for a while, then why not buy one? I went to the Backpackers Car Mart in Christchurch and paid about $2000 for a van…

We drove it round for a couple of months and sold it out-of-season in Auckland for $1000.

Might be worth considering…

To me, the two essential facts you need to know are these:

First, the quality of the field at the events you mention is very low. A handful of fast riders at the front, and then things drop off very quickly. You admit yourself that you finish a long way off the leaders. At that kind of point, your finish time is essentially in the noise.

Just imagine how hard it would be to finish on the same lap as some of those top guys. Once you're training hard enough to do that, you might start worrying about your tyres being too hard to squeeze out those extra few seconds.

Second, people on here regurgitate and amplify a lot of rubbish. Received opinion is often repeated as if it is experience. It's a good way to waste time at work, but a bad way to learn much about riding.

Yes, bar-ends are good (even with risers) if you need more hand positions to relieve numbness. Personally, I don't like them for normal riding.

Yes, you don't need such big tyres if you ride a 29er.

Yes, you can set up your own suspension correctly without having to get someone to do it for you. TBH, while I don't doubt the skill of someone like TF-Tuned, I do doubt their ability to understand your riding style easily. And what of when you take your Midlands-tuned suspension to Scotland or the Alps? Suddenly you're sub-optimal or you're going to send your fork away again?!

Most people here are fast behind a keyboard so it's hard to know who has any credibility. I certainly wouldn't claim to be one of the best, but having ridden with some really good riders, I've learned to take everything here with a pinch of salt.

Thanks, I Facebooked him

I thought you could run 100s on a Pugsley as long as you cut the brake bosses off. I'm considering some myself.

The depth of them varies. In some places it's just slight dips, in others they are at least a couple of inches deep starting way before the corners and going right into them.

Unfortunately, putting in a hard surface and giving it time to bed in isn't really possible as the trail is not part of a centre and will continue to be ridden. It was built by locals years ago, the main force behind building it has moved away.

I'd love to think that the trails will repair themselves, but the bumps beget bigger bumps as they seem to cause more panic braking. The trail is in the worst condition I've ever seen it in.

I could ride elsewhere, or MTFU, but I'd rather make the trail more sustainable.

Given our performance in the tug of war, sumo might not be our strongest suit 8O

Matt Page – he organised this year. You can get him on ssuk2010@googlemail.com for SSUK-related stuff.

I had had a beer or two when I was talking to Matt, so I can't remember exactly what he said about how the venue is decided but he's probably a good person to ask in the first place.

Another fine SSUK :)

Great course, great catering, great location, great marshals, generally great!

Regarding next year, myself and a friend of mine did talk to Matt about our ideas for 2011. We just need to make some phone calls to potential venues before we can make a solid proposal.

That's Rainy Pass, Alaska.

I don't call that bike riding, I call that going on a journey with a bike. There were hundreds of miles of riding on that trip, so it wasn't just dragging a anchor through lots of waist-deep snow.

Feel free to go with a TD email. It might be a week or so before I get to answer it, though ;)

Call that snow? Pfft..

Yes, I did use it for the Divide but some sort of mix-up with downloading the tracks meant that my course ran out after only 4 days. It was great while it lasted, and probably a case of user-error.

I switched from an Edge 705 to a Dakota and it worked out for me, but it depends what bike functions you want.

Nearly everything about it is positive. The touchscreen is good (even with gloves). The display is readable. It's pretty accurate even in trees. The battery life is good (and easily replaceable with AAs). It's good and weather-resistant.

The main thing I miss from the Edge is the virtual training partner function. Also if you are following a route rather than a track, it displays with lots of pins stuck in the route. On some routes that I've downloaded the pins are all so close together that you can barely read the route. You can, of course, convert it to a track, but it's annoying.

Thanks for the map link pedalhead – I'll have to check that out!

I'll admit that I haven't read the whole of this thread but my magic tip that isn't usually mentioned is to practice by not pedalling between the corners.

Quite often people will make mistakes by getting the usual things wrong, and try to compensate by pedalling really hard between the corners. But that tends to just repeat the same mistakes. If you decide not to pedal, you'll enter the corners slower and try to carry more of the speed you have. That's the important bit. Once you're carrying good speed, you can worry about pedalling later.

Cracknell update, seems like he's recovering really well. A long way from his next adventure, but maybe there won't be any permanent damage:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/7928411/James-Cracknell-wows-doctors-with-exceptional-recovery-after-crash.html

How could someone post a youtube link on this thread and not post this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7dpXSdWGI

Can't type… eating

That article Brown linked to is really good.

I do like my softshell but it's so far from waterproof that if I had to walk off a Welsh hill in the rain, I'd be pretty damn cold. It is really comfortable for riding in and a big improvement on a hard shell while I'm producing heat.

The only down-side to soft shells (or mine at least) that no-one has mentioned is that when it's holding lots of water it's really heavy. I'm not a total weight weenie, but I'm always amazed at how heavy it is when I take it off after a wet ride.

I have always bought Hope over the last few years but my most recent wheels have done about 3000 miles and that has killed the bearings in a rear Hope Pro II. Unusually, I can tell you that those 3000 miles involved only 1 day of rain.

I don't think that's terribly impressive and, if I could make the choice again, I probably wouldn't choose Hope. The Pro II bearings seem considerably more prone to wear than XCs were.

But to go back to the original point, I'm too lazy for cup and cone so I'd rather spend a bit more on replacing cartridge bearings every 12-18 months. Stupid, but there you go.

You may be able to wheelie, but I can buy beer

Middleburn say they bring them into the UK now:

http://www.middleburn.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

I've broken two Ti frames, two Al frames, RF Turbine cranks, the faceplate of an Al stem, and the steel bolt of a carbon seatpost.

Never a Surly, and never any other steel frame. I wonder why all but one of my bikes are now steel…

I'm very interested… I'm glad this thread came back up!

I need to get a full frame bag and a proper handlebar bag solution for Iditarod next year and while Eric's stuff is great, it certainly isn't cheap for the UK consumer.